The central theme motivating most of my scholarly
research is the question how companies adapt their strategies and operations
to the specific opportunities and challenges they encounter in different
geographic contexts. the empirical field for most of my research is emerging
economies such as Eastern Europe, South-East Asia and China, where I
investigate in particular the entry and adaptation of foreign multinational
enterprises (MNEs) to local context, and the impact of home context on
outward investment by MNEs originating from emerging economies.

Theoretical contributions arising from this research advance in
particular institution-based theories, which provides suitable angles to
integrate contextual features in firm- or individual level studies. Other
contributions integrate institutional and resource based perspective to
explain the exploration and exploitation of resources under the conditions
of an emerging economy. This essay synthesizes key ideas arising from this
research.

Local Institutions and MNEs Strategies: My early work focused foreign investor's choice of entry mode and foreign
acquisitions in transition economies, taking into consideration aspects of
the local institutional environment. Starting with my PhD thesis on foreign direct investment (FDI)
in Central and Eastern Europe, I have explored the link between institution building during
economic transition, transaction costs and the choice of foreign entry mode (Meyer,
book 1998; Meyer,
JIBS 2001a).

I have led two major research projects on foreign entry that have generated two
books (Estrin & Meyer,
ed., 2004; Meyer & Estrin,
ed., 2007) and a stream of scholarly articles. The first project in
collaboration with London Business School covers Egypt, India, South
Africa and Vietnam; the second has been based at Copenhagen Business School
and covers
Hungary, Poland and Lithuania. The main theme in this research has been the
interaction of local institutions and strategies of foreign investors.

This work enabled me and my co-authors to develop a more fine-grained
understanding of how foreign direct investors adapt
their strategies and operations to the peculiarities of a local institutional framework.
A major line of work concerns the adaptation of entry modes to local
contexts, notably the interaction between institutional development and
resource acquisition by foreign investors (Meyer,
Estrin, Bhaumik & Peng, SMJ 2008). Institutions, however, operate at
different level of analysis. In a study that recently received a lot of
attention attention, we develop the idea of sub-national
level whose impacting on the location and mode choices of foreign investors (Meyer
&
Nguyen, JMS 2005). Other aspects of context we incorporated in the study
of entry strategies are institutional distance (Estrin,
Baghdasaryan & Meyer, JMS 2009), institutional pressures from the
home country (Meyer
& Thein, JWB 2014), and same-home-country agglomeration effects (Tan
& Meyer, JIBS 2012). The response to host country conditions,
however, varies across firms, in fact experienced and in-experienced
investors may show exactly opposite responses to host country uncertainty, as we show in a study of Taiwanese investors (Li
& Meyer, JWB 2009).

The conventional classifications of entry mode, however, are rather
crude. Much of the adaptation happens not in the choice of mode but in the
specific organizational arrangements. Insights from qualitative studies led
me to propose new or refined terminology to capture the nature of foreign
entry strategies, including brownfield acquisitions (Meyer
& Estrin, JIBS 2001,
Estrin &
Meyer, MIR 2011), staged acquisitions and multiple acquisitions (Meyer
& Tran, LRP 2006), and partial acquisitions (Meyer
& Jakobsen 2008,
2007)
and low-profile strategies (Meyer
& Thein, JWB 2014). In a theoretical piece, we outline a resource-based
classification of entry modes at its antecedents (Meyer,
Wright & Pruthi, SMJ 2009), while in practitioner communications, I
offer an integrated framework for firms to develop their entry strategy (Meyer
2008a,
2008b).

A firm's international strategies evolves with its own resource formation
process. The internationalization process (or
'Uppsala') model allows to analyze foreign expansion and entry in a dynamic
perspective that take account of the time dimension. I have thus applied and developed this model to explore the
interaction of firm internationalization and network internationalization (Meyer
& Skak, EMJ, 2002), reviewing alternative conceptualizations of the model (Meyer
& Gelbuda, JIM 2006), exploring discrepancies between intended and
implemented strategies (Santangelo
& Meyer, JIBS 2012). The internationalization model also provides a
theoretical foundation for the study of experience effects in international
business, albeit the direction of such effects may be theoretically
ambiguous (Li
& Meyer, JWB 2009; Meyer & Wang,
chapter 2015).

With respect to the internationalization of MNEs originating from
emerging economies, I have advanced three lines of argument. First, most of
these MNEs are at early stage of their internationalization process, and
hence - even when they are large and successful in their home market - lack
critical resources for managing international operations. Hence, they are
appropriately viewed through the lens of the internationalization process
model, which views foreign activities as accumulation of commitments that
enable resource building, rather than solely the exploitation of existing
resources (Meyer
& Thaijongrak, APJM 2013; Meyer, chapter 2014).
At early stages of of internationalization their home environment, including
not only institutions and resources but also the business ecosystem, has a
critical influence on their outward investment strategies (Hobdari,
Gammelgard, Li & Meyer, APJM, 2017).

Second, in their pursuit of catch-up with world leaders, emerging economy
MNEs often make "strategic asset seeking acquisitions" of firms with advanced
technology or international brand names (Meyer, MBR 2015). These strategies aim to fast-track
the creation of corporate capabilities, and are made feasible by access to
financial resources. Yet, the implementation of such acquired firms creates
challenges that few emerging economy MNEs have mastered so far (Cui,
Meyer & Hu, 2014). In particular, international experience within management team plays a critical role in explaining outward investments, as
we found for Taiwanese (Tan
& Meyer, JIM 2010) and Chinese firms (Cui, Li, Meyer & Li, 2015).
On this basis, and drawing on extensive case research in China, we argue in
a perspectives paper (Meyer
& Xin, IJHRM, 2017) that strategy implementation and the development
of managerial talent for international roles go hand in hand, and thus
strategic and human resource management research ought to be integrated to
generate new theoretical and practice relevant insights on emerging economy
MNEs (and MNEs more generally).

Third, emerging economy MNEs often have a state entity as a major
shareholder. On the one hand, this often facilitates access to scarce
resources at home. However, in some host countries, state-ownership faces
institutional pressures arises from the host society's lack of appreciation
of this form of ownership. Thus, in
Meyer, Ding, Li & Zhang (JIBS 2014), we argue that state-owned firms
have to take extra initiatives to build local legitimacy and 'overcoming
distrust' in the host society; and in Li, Meyer, Ding & Zhang (2016),
we argue that SOEs have better access to their country's' diplomatic
service, which provides them with advantages especially in countries where
rule of law is weak and where their country has strong diplomatic ties. In
Estrin, Meyer, Nielsen & Nielsen (2015), we argue and show
empirically that international strategies of SOEs converge with those of
private firms the stronger the monitoring mechanisms in in the institutional
environment.

Defining the Field of Emerging Economy Business Studies: Along the
rapid changes in emerging economies, business research in these economies
has been evolving, to which which my work has contributed. Periodically, I
have stepped back to
review and reassess the progress of the field. Specifically, I have been involved in
two reviews of the international business literature on
Eastern Europe in view of region-specific issues (Meyer
2001b) and the implications for theory development (Meyer
& Peng, JIBS 2005). Another review focuses on strategy research in
a broader range of emerging economies (Xu
& Meyer, JMS 2013). Background materials for these review papers are
available on this website, including a
bibliography
of the Central/Eastern Europe related literature until 2003, and a
citation
analysis of strategy research in emerging economies. Currently, I am
editing with Robert Grosse the Oxford Handbook of Managing in Emerging
Markets, which aims to consolidate the field.

The 2005 JIBS
paper, was recently awarded the JIBS decade award, and in our retrospective
we review the contribution of different streams of research within the
institutions-based literature, and offer perspectives to further advance our
understanding of business challenges in emerging economies through the
application of institution-based analysis (Meyer
& Peng, JIBS, 2016).

Global Strategy: This stream of research focuses on the global
strategies that brings multinational enterprises into emerging economies in
the first place. Globalization is changing the institutional contexts such
as to diminish the value of resources that can be exploited by domestic
diversification, while facilitating international growth in core lines of
business. I thus coined the term 'globalfocusing' to describe the phenomenon
of many firms converting from diversified conglomerates to specialists in a
niche market with global supply chains and market presence. This work is progressing towards developing a neo-Penrosian
theory of the growth of the firm (Meyer,
JMS 2006,
SC 2009). Related work integrates the global and the local perspectives, notably a
special issue we edited on multinationals and local contexts that in
particular addresses the challenges of exploiting the opportunities for MNEs
operating in very diverse host countries (Meyer,
Mudambi & Narula, JMS 2011).

Multinational Enterprises and Society: Beyond managerial research
questions, I am interested in the impact of foreign investors on the
economic transition and development of the host economies, for instance
through
technology spillovers. I have written a perspective paper on the issue (Meyer,
JIBS 2004a; Meyer, 2005),
edited a collection of readings (Meyer,
ed. 2008)
and contributed one empirical study on technology spillovers from FDI in Estonia (Sinani
& Meyer, JCE 2004). This work culminated in a highly cited meta-analysis of the
spillover literature that explores cross-country variations in spillover
effects finding a U-shaped relationship between received productivity
spillovers and a countries economic and institutional development (Meyer
& Sinani, JIBS 2009).

Research Methods: On a more methodological level, I have become
involved in a debate over the future of Asian management research . My central concern is that deep understanding of social
science phenomena requires careful considerations of contextual influences,
yet too often context is handled to superficially in management research (Meyer,
APJM, 2006b;
Meyer,
APJM, 2007a; Meyer, JIBS, 2007b). I
also have offered my views on the future directions for the field of
international business (Meyer,
AIB-Insights, 2013), and on different ways to handle context
constructively when developing theory in emerging economy business research
(Meyer, MOR, 2015).
At the same time, careful interpretation of the empirical evidence is
essential, which I have aimed to advance in editorials, notably one on
non-linear relationships (Meyer,
APJM 2009) and on offering guidelines to enhance the rigor of hypothesis
testing research in international business (Meyer, Beugelsdijk & van
Witteloostuijn, JIBS 2017).